


Importance of Family

by MoonSilverSprite



Category: Magic School Bus
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-25
Updated: 2018-06-25
Packaged: 2019-05-28 11:30:14
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,012
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15047927
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MoonSilverSprite/pseuds/MoonSilverSprite
Summary: Sequel to The Magic School Bus Visits a Haunted Manor. Phoebe's daughter is starting in Ms Frizzle's class. As Phoebe never actually learnt everything about her teacher, she finds that sometimes people smile because they feel empty inside.





	Importance of Family

**Author's Note:**

  * For [the_ultimateSora](https://archiveofourown.org/users/the_ultimateSora/gifts).



Sequel

Phoebe sat in the waiting room at Walkerville Elementary as she summarised what she would say to the principal. It had been twenty years since they had all said goodbye, way back at the end of sixth grade, and now Phoebe was returning with her eight-year-old.

Lynn was very small and quiet, just as Phoebe had been all those years ago. Unlike her mother, though, her hair was in two pigtails and she wore jeans. But as Lynn was starting first grade, Phoebe had signed her up for Walkerville’s ‘private’ classes.

The same classes Phoebe herself had taken.

Staring at the walls, Phoebe smiled to herself when she saw collages that the eight of them had created between third and sixth grade, in Ms Frizzle’s class.

The next few groups to be in Ms Frizzle’s class had theirs on separate walls, which Phoebe was now looking over, to find interest in.

From a photo dated 1999, eighteen months after Phoebe had graduated, Ms Frizzle was standing underneath some fireworks at Christmas, with the words ‘ _Happy New Millennium, Walkerville!_ ’ underneath in gold glitter. She had nine children sitting cross-legged, along with Liz on the bonnet of the bus. Ms Frizzle’s dress had fireworks all over it. Phoebe didn’t have to be a genius to guess what their field trip had been on.

Phoebe read the names underneath.

_Ellen Fairchild, Trent Anderson, Carla Glazier, Miranda Attwood, Denis Abraham, Geoffrey Waters, Noel Nakahara, Blanca Perez, Nevra Teke – Ms Frizzle’s Class (Second Grade)_

Noel’s clothing looked slightly singed. Yes, it seemed as if Phoebe’s theory had been right.

She looked across the wall and read the dates in her head. 2000. 2001. 2002. 2003. In the final one, the same nine children were there, the word ‘ _graduation_ ’ written out in ink underneath.

Just as she and the class had graduated, so long ago…

Wait a minute, Phoebe asked, was that Liz in the last picture? She calculated that if Ms Frizzle had first received Liz in…1987, that meant – then again, Ms Frizzle altering Liz’s biology so that she would age more slowly wasn’t out of the question.

Another group of pictures lined the third wall. At this point, Ms Frizzle seemed a bit old and worn out, Liz stayed the same and the bus still looked shiny and smiled.

The first picture, dated 2004, had these eight pupils around a large oak tree, holding hands. Liz was dressed as a chipmunk. Again, it was slightly obvious what the field trip had been.

_Amber Christianson, Eleanor Lyndon, Samuel Chancellor, Beverley Chancellor, Veronica Wattana, David Matos, Phillip Marchioni, Paul Fisher – Ms Frizzle’s Class (Kindergarten)_

Phoebe squinted slightly at the group, remembering when she was coming back from a trip to China with her dad, just before Christmas that year. She had seen the bus, shaped like a small yellow airplane, flying alongside them. If the dates were right, it would have been this class she had seen.

Chuckling to herself, Phoebe looked along at the last group, on a beach somewhere far too sunny to be anywhere local, given the date underneath. Ms Frizzle, now going slightly grey, was on a picnic blanket with Liz, as nine children stood around, grinning wildly. In silver glitter, the words ‘ _Happy Christmas From Walkerville!_ ’ were printed directly underneath.

_Frankie Bennett-Thorn, Louis Britton, Patience Samson, Simone Cathleen Stevenson, Nigel Browne, Tara Hendry, Arleen Wash, Sabina Andreev, Ji-Hun Park – Ms Frizzle’s Class (Second Grade)_

The year was 2012, a year that had seemed long ago but at the same time, it seemed like yesterday.

Just like being in Ms Frizzle’s group had been.

Spending her twenties up in Canada, Phoebe had, of course, still been able to see her old friends. Living right across the border had meant only a short drive, even though it was into another country. But after Lynn spent time at Phoebe’s old school, her mother had decided moving to Walkerville had been a better idea.

Especially as Phoebe now had to take long hours at her job.

Leaving Lynn’s chameleon scent available for any predators.

Phoebe took the only option she could think of. Her dad was old and couldn’t look after his granddaughter regularly any more, even though being blind had never been a problem for him before. So Phoebe had contacted Ms Frizzle and asked if she would mind looking after her daughter.

Phoebe turned as she heard the door open and saw Ms Frizzle come out of the principal’s office.

Despite her ginger hair having nearly turned all grey, as well as crows’ feet around her eyelids, it was the same Ms Frizzle that Phoebe had known as a child.

“Hello, Ms Frizzle.” Phoebe blushed slightly.

Ms Frizzle smiled sweetly. “Call me Valerie, Pheeb.” Then she looked down at Lynn, who was now standing behind her mother, gripping her legs tight. “And this must be Lynn. Oh Lynn, you look exactly like your mother at her age!”

“Lynn, say hello.” Phoebe tried to persuade her, but the girl just moved back behind her mother’s legs.

“Oh, she’s just shy!” Phoebe giggled. “Well, Valerie, I’ll be back later to fix the paperwork and then she’ll be ready in September.”

“I didn’t want to leave my old school, Mom.” Lynn finally spoke, to which Ms Frizzle gave a chuckle.

“She truly _is_ like her mother!”

 

That weekend, Phoebe went along with Keesha to Keesha’s parents’ headstones.

It was her grandmother’s birthday, apparently, Keesha had informed Phoebe. But her grandmother, who was now in her early eighties, was too ill to leave the house at the moment.

“When did you find out?” Phoebe asked Keesha, as they stood by the two markers, after placing down two bouquets of blue roses down. It was a question that everyone in the group seemed to avoid.

Keesha sighed and pulled her hair behind her ear. “When I was sixteen,” she answered, “I was getting out of the bath and I saw scales behind my ears and I screamed loudly. When Grandma told me everything, I started to remember what Ms Frizzle –“

She sighed, squeezing her eyes tight.

Phoebe nodded. “We all remember that night,” she said as she held her friend closer, “but I only remembered what Ms Frizzle told us on the bus when I got them, too. Apparently she told Dorothy Ann a lot more than us and she went ballistic when she recalled.”

Phoebe herself had only noticed the scales when she had been getting ready for sophomore prom. She’d seen them and wore a hat all through the occasion. She’d tried to not let them bother her, but her dad had noticed when he hugged her.

He had then said that he should have told her earlier.

Her grandparents, who lived way up in Prince George, had been born in a South American ambassador’s petting zoo somewhere in California. He didn’t say how they had become human, but it was entirely possible that he wasn’t sure himself. All Phoebe’s dad knew was that he had been born blind and this hadn’t been good enough for them, shuffling him off to a (human) relative. He had been just as in the dark, so to speak, as Phoebe had been.

He knew that her mother was human, but that was generally about it. He’d only found out when his father came back to meet him in the first time in nearly thirty years to say that he was really a shapeshifting lizard. Only because they were scared that their future grandchildren, blind or otherwise, might have chameleon powers and misuse them.

But what made Phoebe even more proud of her father was that even though all of this had happened since then and he had known how to take another body, he chose to remain blind so that Phoebe wouldn’t be hurt, even after her mother died when Phoebe had been only eight and they’d had to move to Washington and live with another (also human) relative.

Washington and Walkerville in particular because he had heard that the third grade teacher was a chameleon and her scent would mask any that Phoebe would emit.

Phoebe glanced over as she walked back to her bicycle (she had never owned a car and didn’t want to, after a nightmare field trip involving fossil fuels) and saw Ms Frizzle standing near the top of the hill the cemetery was located in, placing some lilies down.

When Phoebe made an excuse to Keesha and ran back inside to see which grave Ms Frizzle had visited, she found herself rather surprised.

Instead of an actual headstone, it was a marker, similar to the one Keesha’s parents had. They had a marker because their bodies were apparently unrecoverable. This marker seemed just the same.

Two names were inscribed on old, green stone, for some strange reason. Maybe it was because Ms Frizzle liked it. Or maybe it was actually copper that had gotten extremely wet. Phoebe made a mental note to ask Arnold.

_Oliver Irving 1763 – 1865 Zachariah Irving 1770 – 1865 I will always love you, my brothers_

Underneath it read that the marker had been paid for by ‘Mary Irving’ in 1990.

Phoebe remembered Ms Frizzle had said on the bus that her original name had been Mary, but ever since Phoebe recalled what their teacher said, she had wondered what her old surname had been.

Phoebe’s dad had also said that chameleons, if they chose to, could live for centuries in different bodies, especially as her grandparents, who had apparently been born before the San Francisco earthquake, were still alive and on their third bodies.

As Phoebe looked out and saw Ms Frizzle enter the bus in the parking lot, she wondered exactly what the teacher had gone through.

 

“Why did you decide for Lynn to come to Walkerville Elementary?” Ms Frizzle had asked her, shortly before Halloween. Phoebe had come over to watch the class play a baseball game (bringing back memories of being squashed in Dorothy Ann’s book) and the two women were now sitting away from most of the watching crowd.

“The same reason my dad brought me here.” Phoebe answered, looking straight ahead at Lynn as she ran around the pitch.

Ms Frizzle went rather quiet and instead concentrated on the game.

Phoebe saw Liz sitting on a bench, dressed as a referee, blowing a whistle. Then Phoebe turned to Ms Frizzle again.

“Is that Liz?” she asked.

Ms Frizzle looked at her former pupil. “Yes.”

One word was all either needed to say.

Phoebe asked, slowly, “Ms Frizzle, is this how you want to stay? Looking after chameleon children until your mortal body gives out?”

“In a nutshell,” the teacher replied, “it’s the least I can do. But being so close to retirement age, physically, I guess I’ll have to try and convince the principal to let me on. By human or magical means.”

Phoebe then asked something she realised she had never actually asked. “Do you have any family left, Valerie?”

Ms Frizzle closed her eyes and sighed.

“Not exactly.”

 

Flying to Nebraska on the bus only took a short amount of time, as it turned out. But when Ms Frizzle landed outside what seemed to be a mental hospital, Phoebe felt rather uneasy.

“Err, Valerie, who lives here?” she asked, nervous.

Ms Frizzle responded in a sad tone of voice.

“Katie.”

After taking badges from a ward, the two women walked down a pristine white corridor until they reached a room with green glitter over the walls.

 _Fiona Frizzle_ , the sign read.

“I thought you said she was called Katie?” Phoebe asked as Ms Frizzle knocked on the door.

“I need to hide her.” Ms Frizzle answered plainly. Phoebe nodded as the door opened.

A nurse was standing there in scrubs. She said, “We won’t be long. Just getting her ready for bed.”

Inside the room, it seemed perfectly normal to Phoebe. Four white walls, one small television set with video player, a coffee table with a half-finished puzzle, a yellow notebook on the blue duvet and shelves of books and video cassettes.

A woman sat on the bed. She seemed to be in her late fifties, but of course, she was a lot older. She had two blonde pigtails and wore a bright white nightdress. She was chewing one of the pigtails in her mouth.

“Katie, what did I say about chewing your hair?” Ms Frizzle asked softly as she carefully removed it. She pointed at Phoebe, leaning closer to the woman. “Katie, this is Phoebe. Remember her?”

The woman squinted as she looked closely. Then her head turned back to Ms Frizzle, confused.

“Phoebe’s a little girl,” she spoke, in a child-like voice that was a little unnerving, “you take them on the bus.”

“No, Katie, Katie,” Ms Frizzle held her arms around Katie’s shoulders, “Phoebe’s grown up now. That was a long time ago.”

“Oh,” Katie nodded, starting to chew her pigtails again.

Phoebe looked around the room properly. Some of the books seemed to be fantasy books or children’s stories. They all seemed well-thumbed and a few partially chewed.

A photograph in a silver frame sat on the shelf. It was the same photo that Phoebe had seen in the mansion, all those years ago. The four women and Liz.

“Katie, is this another story?” Ms Frizzle asked, picking up the notebook. Katie sat cross-legged on her bed, just like a child.

“Yes! I wrote – another story about your class, Mary.” She then gabbled quickly, “Sorry, Valerie.”

“That’s fine,” Ms Frizzle reassured her, before turning to Phoebe and whispering, “she writes stories about the class. Doesn’t seem to realise that you’ve grown up. She pretends she’s their teacher.”

Phoebe tried to be very careful about what she said next. “What – what exactly _happened_ , Valerie?”

Ms Frizzle closed her eyes tight and sighed.

“Before I left – back in the summer of 1989 – it was terrible. Our enemies were gaining on us from all sides. By enemies, I mean the good guys. Katie and I were brainwashed assassins, remember?”

Phoebe nodded.

“Katie was trapped by our Leader. The Leader suspected a mole, but was in fact completely paranoid. Old and paranoid. They had Katie tortured.”

Ms Frizzle looked like she was holding back tears, grabbing her hair and squeezing it hard. With a small choke, she spieled off the rest.

“Three days. She had her tortured for that long. I didn’t know. I was in the mountains. But when I came back, she was lying on the rugs, holding herself close and babbling. Rissa didn’t care one bit. I think Isabelle was going to comfort us, but she was too scared of Clarissa to try and do anything.

“Katie had always been slightly child-like, but now she was worse. She kept confusing me with her mother, even though her mother died over three hundred and fifty years earlier. And since she hated her mother for sending her away to a school at the age of ten, I honestly wonder how much Katie was damaged.

“I think the seeds of doubt were planted in my head some time before this, but after what happened to Katie, I was determined to leave the Leader’s inner circle. After everyone had escaped or were captured by the good guys – think of it as being similar to when the Allies were closing in on Berlin, Phoebe – I managed to get Katie away from them. If they interrogated her, I doubt she’d have survived. My friend Miller and I took her across several state lines and had her housed here. She’s been here for almost thirty years, Phoebe. But it’s the only place I can keep her safe. And it’s killing me inside.”

Ms Frizzle sat down on a yellow couch in the corner, with Phoebe beside her. Ms Frizzle looked back at the patient on the bed, leafing through a children’s book.

“The ironic thing is that if she tells anyone that she met Shakespeare, they’ll think it’s part of her condition. She really did meet him, back when she was eleven. And we flew on the _Kitty Hawk_ and saw _Birth of a Nation_ in theatres. But nobody’s going to believe her.”

Ms Frizzle gave a small smirk and then looked at the framed photograph.

“Keesha and Ralphie found Clarissa’s body in the cage, back in the mansion. But I’m not entirely sure what magic made her talk. I don’t know what happened to Isabelle. I think she’s in Tanzania. So, to summarise, Phoebe, Katie’s the only family I have left. She’s also one of the reasons I’ll never bit another human. I can’t live on without her.”

Phoebe held Ms Frizzle close to her, telling her not to worry. But the teacher just stayed quiet, thousands of thoughts dancing inside her head.

When they’d flown back, Phoebe saw Lynn run over to her in the parking lot. “It’s nearly midnight, Mom!” she shouted, “The light show’s almost over.”

“OK, coming, sweetheart,” Phoebe reassured her, taking her hand and walking with her, “is this anything to do with the field trip you had three weeks ago?”

Lynn nodded.

“Yeah. We learnt all about lights when we went inside a flashlight, a rainbow and stadium lights!”

Phoebe raised an eyebrow at Ms Frizzle, chuckling slightly before entering the auditorium.

The rest of Lynn’s class were already asleep on their chairs. Dominic Perlstein-Li, Pamela Albert, Mark Waterman, Delores Smalls, Anne Maki, Laura Pickering, Andrew Engestrom and Cristian Catalan all sat along the front row, near two empty seats. Lynn dragged her mother over to them and Phoebe watched the strange light machine shine rainbow colours across the room.

It definitely seemed as if Ms Frizzle was content with her life. True, her years were running out, but she wasn’t going to change anything, despite the fact that she could.

But she did try and that’s what had made Phoebe certain that she could look after these children, just as she had done for her, all those years ago.


End file.
